The Life Lesson I Learned from a Broken Kitchen Faucet

I believe there are lessons in everything in life if we look for them. I try to stay on the hunt for what I can learn from things. Recently, I learned a valuable life lesson from a broken kitchen faucet.

I like to think that I’m a resourceful person. My whole life I’ve been called “practical”, “plain”, even “hard working”. I wore them as badges of honor. I like being able to see the practical uses for things, I enjoy being plain and not needing much fluff. Hard working? Who doesn’t want to be thought of that way? Then, we had a broken kitchen faucet. It taught me more than any other experience I believe I’ve had recently.

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I came home after a busy day of running errands. I put our purchases away, started a load of laundry, and decided to wash up the few dishes that were in the sink. When I turned on the faucet, water came rushing out of…. everywhere. From every single part of the faucet. Not good. I turned it off, went about the rest of my business, and forgot all about it.

The next morning, we had a little trip planned and were out of town all day. The next day was church. Very busy weekend, indeed. Very little need for the kitchen faucet. After church, Nick came home, turned on the kitchen faucet, and wouldn’t you know it…broken. His brain, being less distracted than my own, quickly started to fix the faucet. It was pretty far gone at this point, and every single part of the hose and the nozzle were pouring water out. The leak had completely flooded under the sink, and the water had to be cut off to it. It was time to order a new faucet.

The lesson…

For about a week, we didn’t have running water in the kitchen. I had to carry gallons of water from the bathroom to the kitchen for dishes, cooking, etc. It’s about 35 feet from the kitchen sink to the bathroom sink. This added several minutes on to my normal routine. It was tiring, and tedious. What I really learned was that convenience has made me lazy. I would be as bold to say convenience has made society as a whole lazy.

Imagine with me…

Imagine you are the lady of this house when it was built about 125 years ago. You would have gotten up in the middle of the night to start a fire in the kitchen stove and set breakfast on. Then, you would go to the well… outside… pump the water into a bucket and bring the water to heat on a wood stove. Once the water was heated, you could wash dishes, clean surfaces, and wipe smudges from tiny hands and faces.

All day, multiple times a day, you would have to feed the stove to ensure it was hot enough to cook and then pump more water. On top of hauling and heat water, kindling had to be cut to feed the cook stove. Often times, this was done by the wife. She was home while her husband was out working in the field, or away for work elsewhere. If she was running low on small pieces of wood for her cook stove, it had to be done. Regardless of the time, or temperature.

And I thought carrying instantly hot water from the bathroom sink was difficult. I’m a firm believer that every convenience gained is a skill lost. I certainly relearned that from a broken kitchen faucet. I’ve often thought that I had enough grit to “make it” as a pioneer, or even a farmer’s wife in the 1890s. Now, I’m not so sure.

My take a-way…

After the first day, and these thoughts swirling around in my head, I began to enjoy the process of filling the sink with hot water and the work associated with it. I certainly learned to appreciate my great grandmothers more. How they raised large families, put by enough food for a year, and just generally survived is so utterly incredible. I hope to be a little more like them.

A few Bible verses came to mind during this week, I’ll share the below.

• “and whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men;” Colossians 3:23
• “In all labour there is profit: but the talk of the lips tendeth only to penury.” Proverbs 16:3
• “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.” Ecclesiastes 9:10
• “The soul of the sluggard desireth, and hath nothing: but the soul of the diligent shall be made fat.” Proverbs 13:4
• “Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise:” Proverbs 6:6
• “He that tilleth his land shall be satisfied with bread: but he that followeth after vain persons is void of understanding.” Proverbs 12:11

While convenience has certainly streamlined our days, and most of our chores, I’m not so sure we’ve benefitted from all of them. Is the convenience of electric stoves enough to negate the fact that many of us wouldn’t be able to start a fire to cook with? Is a box meal’s convenience more valuable than the skill of cooking from scratch? Would purchasing a ready-made loaf of bread be better than the know-how of kneading and baking? I believe these are things we must all answer for ourselves, but for myself. No… no, they’re not.

One final thing that the broken kitchen faucet reiterated to me was this: Don’t let the little problems grow too big to fix. Maybe if the leak would’ve been caught in the beginning, and not let go, it would have been fixable. I’ll never know, but I can tell you from life experience that it’s always better to address a problem before it gets out of hand.

Lastly, I’ll share the new kitchen faucet I ordered. It is nearly identical to the last one, but this one is in black instead of stainless. The water pressure is amazing, and I love being able to move the hose to fill our water filter up!

I’d love to know if you’ve learned any life lessons recently, or what you’ve been up to! Today is the very first day of Spring, and I am SO EXCITED to get my hands and feet in the dirt!!

As always, thanks for spending at tiny part of your day with me! I appreciate you!

Here’s an image to pin for later…